B-Line gong show.

I was doing a little long-weekend reading yesterday and came across a funny pair of passages. This Translink report (pdf) has a lot of useful things to say about the B-Lines, but notice what it calls the B-Lines: “Bus Rapid Transit in Vancouver: a Review of Experience.” So! The B-Lines are Vancouver’s BRT system, huh? Okay, then.

B-Lines operate at 22.23 km/h, only about 5 km/h faster than the locals in the same corridors. The same is true of other limited stop services.

Five kilometers an hour faster than the slow buses! That’s some BRT alright! Woo!

Snark aside, the point is that Vancouver doesn’t have any “bus rapid transit.” It has limited stop buses, which for the morning and afternoon rushes–i.e., when most people are taking them–are almost as slow as normal buses. A serious take on moving people along the east-west axis of the city can’t pretend otherwise.